For Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, a dreaded reality begins to dawn

The dreaded reality for Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg that the May budget may not deliver the “first surplus in a decade” is beginning to dawn.

Delivering a budget surplus has not just been the core of the Coalition’s strategy since the election nine months ago, it has been the strategy.

At the same time, Labor’s dual political strategy has been to argue that no surplus will be a collapse of the Coalition’s economic credentials while putting the budget back in the black at the cost of economic growth and job losses would be an empty and uncaring victory.

Labor’s strategy has the advantage of covering both potential outcomes while the Coalition’s has been an all-out gamble on only one — a surplus, regardless of the circumstances.

While the Prime Minister may deride Anthony Albanese as always having something “each way”, Jim Chalmers, Labor’s Treasury spokesman, has demonstrated the strength of an each-way bet from opposition, consistently calling for stimulus to the economy by bringing forward tax cuts and putting people’s jobs ahead of restoring a marginally positive budget number.

Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have resisted those calls for an extra cash stimulus and stuck to being “steady, calm and sober” compared with Labor’s “high-taxing, damaging and reckless” policies.

That is until Tuesday morning, when they stood up to ostensibly close the door on coronavirus but opened the door on the possibility of not breaking the decade-long run of budgets in the red.

Morrison used all the trappings of office to announce his core strategy may not be fulfilled without actually announcing it. The words never left the lips of Morrison nor the Treasurer but the message of the threat to the budget was broadcast loud and clear.

As Morrison warned that the coronavirus was a global health crisis and not a financial crisis, Frydenberg went hard on the economic impact being worse than the bushfires and extending far beyond tourism and education sectors.

Of course, the Coalition still wants to break the drought and produce a budget surplus and it is possible iron ore prices, which have sustained the revenue, may still do enough but they are already preparing the retreat.

Morrison says Australia is well placed to face the crisis of coronavirus as well as the floods and bushfires because he didn’t give in to calls to “splash money around” last year.

Yet Chalmers is still able to ask the difficult question: hasn’t economic growth “almost halved, wages growth stalled, consumption growth weakened, business investment and productivity declined, underemployment increased, government debt and household debt reached new record highs, and that all before the fires and the coronavirus hit?”